THE NOTION OF GOD 

Since theology is the study about God (it cannot be the study of God, since God cannot be studied), our attention should be drawn to God.  The topic of God should be the main focus of the theological enterprise.  Everything else in theology revolves or should revolve around the idea or notion of God. The study about God is what I would call in the words of the late Dr. James Cone, the "central semantic axis" of Christian theology.

We do not need to compare the beliefs of one religious system with those of another religious system in order to see notions about God.  Within any given religious systems, we can encounter various notions or ideas about the Deity.  Even within the Christian faith itself, the notion of God is not monolithic by any stretch of the. imagination.  Christians, both collectively and individually speaking, have different ideas of God.  Even when they make use of the Scriptures, which by the way utilize language that attributes human qualities to God (anthropomorphic language), they have different ideas and notions of God.

The idea of God is at once the most important and yet the most questionable of all religious doctrines or "symbols" in the West, and I dare to add, as well as in the East.  This idea or symbol points to the central object of Christian and Jewish faith, the sole "subject" of their revelation, and the final principle of  both reality and  meaning throughout human existence.  Nevertheless, of all concepts in modern cultural life-and in varying degrees for "believers" and "doubters" alike-the idea of God remains the most elusive, the most frequently challenged, the most persistently criticized and negated of all important convictions. Is there a God? Can such a One be experienced, known, or spoken of?  Is such knowledge experience testable, such knowledge verifiable, and such speech meaningful.  Or is all such experience illusory, such  seeming knowledge in fact a projection, and such speech empty?  These issues represent the primordial issues for philosophy of religion, for philosophical theology, and for confessional theology alike (Langdon Gilkey in "God." Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Theology and Tasks. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. 88).

Almost every dominant motif and movement in modernity-its expanding scientific inquiry, its emphasis on what is natural, experienced, and verifiable, its persistent search for the greater well-being of humans in this world, its increasing emphasis on autonomy and on present satisfactions-has progressively challenged the concept of God and unsettled both its significance and certainty.  This challenge has been on two fronts.  They are:

1.  The traditional concepts of God, inherited from the premodern cultures of medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Europe, revealed themselves in almost every aspect to have anachronistic elements and to be unintelligible in the light of modern knowledge and modern attitudes towards reality, with the consequence that these concepts have had to reformulated on a fundamental level (Ibid.).

2.  More important, these same aspects of modernity challenged the very possibility of an idea of God, its knowability, its coherence, and its meaning to much of modernity such an idea is on a number of grounds an impossible idea and, as a consequence, the whole enterprise of a theistic religion appears as a futile, expensive, and even harmful activity (Ibid., pp. 88-89).

Because of this second point, the prime problematic connected with the symbol of God has in modern times differed noticeably from earlier problematics.  Our fundamental questions on religious reflection are not about the nature of the divine and the character of God's activity or will toward us, which represented the main questions of an earlier time.  The question now is the possibility of God's existence in a seemingly naturalistic world, the possibility of valid knowledge of God and meaningful discourse about God, and the possibility of God's existence in a seemingly naturalistic world, the possibility of valid knowledge and meaningful discourse about God, and the possibility of any sort of "religious" existence, style of life, or hope at all.  As a result, the efforts of religious thinkers in our century have by and large been directed at at the following interrelated problems:

1.  A justification of the meaning and the validity of the concept of God in relation to other, apparently less questionable forms of experience-scientific, philosophical, social political, artistic, psychological, or existentialist (Ibid. p. 89).

2.  A reformulation of that concept so that it can be meaningful and relevant to the modern world (Ibid.)

Despite the new and sharper edge to the question of God in modern times, certain continuing issues characteristic of the traditional discussion of this concept have also been present, albeit in specifically modern form.  In the concept of God, as in the reality experienced in religious existence, dialectical tensions have appeared and reappeared as the center of theological discussion.  It is a strange notion filled with paradoxes and polarities.  These perennial problems internal to the concept of God (whether orthodox or reformulated) also characterize modern discussions and manifest themselves with each option characteristic of modern theology and philosophy of religion.  We shall continue to explore their career in modern theologies as well as to show the way modern views of God have handled the question of the reality of God and if the possibility of such a concept.  (Ibid.).

Questions for reflection:

1.  What is your notion of God?

2.  Where do you derive your notion from?

3. How does your notion compare to other people's notion?

4.  Do you think that your notion of God is inferior or superior to that of other people's notions, or is it just different?

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary